


Not Guilty

by Deonara2012



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 16:36:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3536480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deonara2012/pseuds/Deonara2012
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The explosion shook the Dome, and Jun could imagine what had happened to the rest of Arashi</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Guilty

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 2009, so I have NO idea what concert I was even thinking about (although it was probably the one that had them in Jedi Samurai gear for "Right Back to You"). I was just barely into the fandom, so I probably did a couple of things wrong.

The explosion ripped through the Tokyo Dome during Matsumoto Jun’s solo, when the mobile platform had reached the farthest point from the stage. He turned to face the stage and stared, frozen, at the smoke billowing out over the crowd. Everything had stopped, and he ripped the headset off, pressing the ear bud to his ear, trying to hear something more than the oppressive silence through the screams around him.

His knees gave way and he collapsed to the platform, unable to stop trying to see something – anything! – through the clouds of smoke and debris. 

It took forever before anyone could reach him; by the time he could climb down, the crowd had gone, and people had started to clear up the wreck of the stage. People he knew, vaguely – not those he wanted desperately to see – steered him away from it, and someone he probably should know carefully (and that’s why) explained that the electronics were shot, so the ear bud wasn’t necessary anymore. He blinked at the man, then surrendered it – since he’d heard nothing through it since the explosion.

Numb – and freezing – he stripped when told and got in the shower, washing off sweat and grime caked on his face, in his hair, and anywhere else bare skin had shown. When he finally got out, his mind had cleared a little. Or started working again. “Was anyone hurt?” he asked as he dressed – no way had they left him alone.

“Anyone?”

He didn’t know the voice. “Fans. Stage crew.” His voice stuck in his throat on the names he should ask about. But they’d have told him, if they were alive. “Anyone,” he finally repeated.

“I have a list,” their manager’s familiar voice said, a strange note in it. “Names, and where they went.”

“Good.” He still shivered, but his luggage was at the hotel and his coat had been back stage, so he’d deal. He walked out of the showers to the lounge area. “We’ll start with the closest.”

The manager stared. “Now?”

“Surely by now, everything’s calmed down there – were any of them severely injured?”

“Most of them will be kept overnight, but I heard of no life-threatening injuries.” He hesitated. “Are you sure? Right now?”

Jun nodded firmly. “Now. Please.”

Not that he could actually help any of those he visited, but they could help him not think, which he desperately wanted right now.

So he went from bed to bed, smiling, signing casts and anything else they asked, trying to hide how he shook, how cold he felt, and he counted it a success when no one asked how he was, and the manager announced they’d be going to the next hospital. There, he met his first opposition.

He stood in the hallway, waiting to find out where to go next, when someone draped a blanket over his shoulders. “I can’t believe no one has told you you’re in shock and you need to sit down,” a familiar voice said.

He turned to her, trying to push the blanket off even as she wrapped it further around him. “You’re going to collapse and do yourself damage.” She gently brushed hair from his eyes.

“O-Ohno-san,” he stammered. She smiled.

“You need to rest.”

“I-I can’t. They were injured….”

“You can see them tomorrow. Or,” she added, “when you wake up. Your parents are on their way; they were delayed.”

It started to catch up with him, and he tried to push it away, escape the blanket; instead, she set him gently down into a chair and tightened it around him. “No, I can’t,” he protested again.

She smiled sadly, and laid her hand over his eyes. “It’ll be okay,” she murmured, and then, out of nowhere, the darkness swallowed him whole.

 

“Can’t it wait? He’s not awake yet.”

His mother sounded impatient. Jun ignored it; he’d finally gotten warm, and whatever he lay on was soft.

Wait. Lying down?

“I’m sorry. It can’t. We have questions for him.”

“Surely, until he wakes…” his father started.

“No. It must be now.”

Well, fine. Jun fought his way out of the blankets around him, forcing his eyes open. “I’m up,” he slurred drunkenly. “I’m up. Can I have a shower?”

“I can wait for that.”

That person, he found out after his shower, had come to escort him to the police station. Nursing a large cup of coffee and sporting his glasses (no way could he deal with contacts today), he followed his parents out to the car, still thoroughly disoriented. How had he gotten to the hotel?

The inspector showed him directly to a small room, and he sat there and shivered, cold again. Finally, another man walked in and sat across from him. “You look cold.”

Jun nodded. “I haven’t been warm since last night.”

“Speaking of last night, what did you see?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. I had my back to the stage. It exploded, and then I saw dust and dirt and things flying….” He swallowed.

“Did you hear anything?”

“Hear?” Jun asked.

“Over the radio.” The inspector touched his ear.

“The earpiece?” Jun shook his head. “The other mics are turned off when they go backstage. Why?”

“We found out that the bomb was in Ohno Satoshi’s bag. Would he have any reason….”

“No!” Jun interrupted, and stared at the inspector, horrified. “Besides, he was backstage when….” He stopped, frozen, trying to catch his breath, to keep from breaking down completely.

He couldn’t think about that yet.

“Do you have any reason to get rid of them?”

“No!” He shivered harder, making it more difficult to talk. “I’d n-never. Th-they were why I c-could keep going.”

The door opened and a tall man in a dark suit, carrying a briefcase, stepped in. “I’m your lawyer,” he said. “Say nothing else.”

The inspector, looking disappointed, got up and left the room.

Jun stared at the man, barely hearing the next words he spoke, trying to grasp what he'd just heard. “Wait,” he interrupted. “Wait. They think I set the bomb?”

“At the moment, you are their main suspect.”

“But… I’d never…” He just stared, stunned, shivering.

The lawyer – he hadn’t introduced himself, or if he had, Jun hadn’t caught his name – rubbed his forehead. “They have reports of arguments.”

“We argued,” Jun admitted. “But we…. No one ever threatened anyone. And I… I’ll embarrass anyone, but I’d never actually hurt someone!” He couldn’t bring himself to say ‘kill’.

“Do you have proof of that?”

“Proof?” He didn’t believe it. This was insane! “Hours of footage,” he said softly. “No jokes, pranks, anything I did hurt anyone physically.”

“Ah.”

He took out a notepad and began to write, and Jun sat next to him, shivering. He couldn’t get warm, and the silence echoed.

A few moments later, the inspector returned and sat down across from him again. “Do you know a Joshuyo Teiko?”

Jun looked up, slowly. “No. Why?”

“We found a note in your bag.”

He slid it across the table – it had been in the blast, apparently, since it had singed edges – and Jun read it – or what he could of it. Then he looked up, startled. “She… She…. This isn’t funny,” he stammered, unable to think. “She thought I’d _like_ this? She thought I _wanted_ this?”

His whole life had been… blown apart, because of some crazed fan? He just stared, barely aware that the lawyer spoke quickly and quietly to him, that the inspector had called for help, and then, again, the darkness swallowed him whole.

 

“Would you stop it? He’s not a doll.”

“But he’s so cute when he sleeps! And besides, if he’s not awake he can’t get me back.”

“Stop it, both of you.” That was his mother. “I’ll tell him, if you don’t leave him alone.”

The resultant clamor sounded so familiar, and he was afraid to wake up to that horrid silence that had never quite left his ear. “Hey, hey! I think he’s waking up.”

“No,” he moaned softly. “Don’t want to.”

Something poked his cheek. “Aiba! Stop that!”

“But he…”

“Yes, I know. He’s cute. But he’s going to get you if you keep poking him like that!”

“No. I mean, I know that, but he doesn’t want to wake up. I think we should make him.”

“I think you should let him sleep.” His mother again, voice of sanity. Only she was talking to the voices in his head, too, and that meant not sanity. Or it meant something else.

“He can sleep later.” 

“Don’t say that!”

“I agree with Aiba, Sho-kun. He can sleep later.” 

And someone grabbed his shoulder and shook. “Wake up, Jun. You can get your beauty sleep later.”

None of this was real, right? No one had told him differently, and they would have, wouldn’t they?

Still, he couldn’t deny it any longer, and he cracked his eyes open. “What?”

Nothing but blurs. “The lawyer saved your glasses,” Ohno said cheerfully – a far cry from the ‘beauty sleep’ comment – and then he could see as his friend plopped them on his face. “You almost broke them.”

“We didn’t know you fainted, MatsuJun,” Aiba said with a grin. “It really scared some people.”

“Us,” Sho interjected. “Mostly.”

“Him,” Nino said, slapping Sho on the shoulder. “The rest of us laughed.”

“But,” Jun protested softly. “But they never said…. I didn’t think….”

Ohno snorted softly. “Don’t admit to _that_. Mom said that when they found us, she’d already put you to sleep, and then they wouldn’t let us near you, because they thought you’d done it. She’s explaining the problem with that, in detail, to the man in charge right now.”

He stared up at them, four faces that belonged to his best friends that he _knew_ someone had killed… and smiled. “Wow, am I glad to see you guys!” He lunged up, grabbing everyone he could, and pulled them all into a hug, clinging desperately.

“Sh,” Sho said after a while, when the first desperation had passed. “It’s okay.”

That was his first clue that he’d started to cry. “I thought… I didn’t….”

“Sh,” Sho repeated, and someone – from the feel of it, Riida – combed gently through his hair. Aiba held his hand, stroking it gently, and Sho was at his back, rubbing circles into his shoulder, and the handkerchief someone had given him smelled of Nino and the laundry soap he used.

“Feel better?” Sho asked when his sobs had finally tapered off.

“Mm,” Jun said, and sat up – with help from the others. “What happened?”

“What… happened?” Nino repeated.

“Well, the bomb went off,” Jun said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad, but… how are you here?”

“Because Riida suddenly started shouting for everyone to get out,” Aiba explained.

“Even pushed the wardrobe lady out,” Nino said with something like awe in his voice.

“The door had barely closed behind him when the bomb went off,” Sho finished.

“How did you know?”

Ohno shifted his shoulders, looking uncomfortable. “Ghosts. Hanging around my bag,” he said shortly. “I went to check.”

Jun nodded. “And… this Joshuya-chan. Did they catch her?”

“Who?” Nino interrupted.

“Or do they still think I did this?” Jun went on.

“We’ll set them straight,” Sho promised. “Who?”

“This girl. A fan.” He put all the scorn he could into the word. “She said she’d… She thought I shouldn’t waste my time with the group, that I should be solo….” He swallowed hard, trying to keep his stomach contents in his stomach.

“Are you okay?” Ohno asked softly.

Jun nodded, breathing deeply, hunched over at the thought… no. Think on something else. “So… What took them so long to find you?”

Aiba chuckled darkly, a sound so foreign to him that Jun had to look up. “They didn’t think of looking outside until they realized they didn’t find any bodies back stage. The blast had… knocked us all flat, and then we got covered with half the Dome –“

“Don’t exaggerate,” Sho said, almost automatically.

“And those costumes are impossible to move in, when there’s boards and stuff on them,” Aiba finished with a glare at Sho.

“And then wet,” Nino added. “But they found us, eventually, and then no one would tell us what was going on, and they didn’t even tell our parents for a while…” He trailed off at a knock at the door.

Sho went to open it, and Jun glanced around. His mother had been there earlier, right? “I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear that,” he heard, and twisted around to watch his mother walk in. He didn’t ask when she’d left – he already had a ton of questions, and that was way down on the list.

It got shoved further when he recognized the man with her. The inspector smiled – actually smiled – and bowed. “I thought you’d like to know we dropped all charges against you,” he said. “The girl confessed to planting the bomb.”

Jun nodded. “Thank you,” he said, and with another bow, the man let himself out.

“Well, that’s good,” Nino said.

Jun agreed. That was very good.


End file.
